(Includes maps) The focus of the American and British war effort in 1943 was on the ancient lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea where in May victory came at last in Tunisia and where in July Allied armies began a five-week campaign to conquer Sicily. The invasion of Italy in September sharpened that focus as Allied troops for the first time since 1940 confronted the German Army in a sustained campaign on the mainland of Europe. The fighting that followed over the next eight months was replete with controversial actions and decisions. These included apparent American peril during the early hours in the Salerno beachhead; a British advance from the toe of the peninsula that failed to ease the pressure at Salerno; the fight to cross a flooded Rapido River; the bombing of the Benedictine abbey on Monte Cassino; and the stalemated landings at Anzio. The author addresses these subjects objectively and candidly as he sets in perspective the campaign in Italy a'1d its accomplishments. It was a grueling struggle for Allied and German soldier alike, a war of small units and individuals dictated in large measure by inhospitable terrain and wet and cold that soon immersed the battlefield. The methods commanders and men employed to defeat the terrain and a resourceful enemy are instructive now and will continue to be in the future, for the harsh conditions that were prevalent in Italy know no boundary in time. Nor do the problems and accomplishments of Allied command and co-ordination anywhere stand out in greater relief than in the campaign in Italy. The role of United States forces in earlier operations in the Mediterranean has been told in previously published volumes of this series: Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West and Sicily and the Surrender of Italy. A volume in preparation, Cassino to the Alps, will carry the operational story through the last year of the fighting. The strategic setting is described in detail in Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943-1944.

Operations from the invasion of the Italian mainland near Salerno through the winter fighting up to the battles for Monte Cassino (including the Rapido River crossing) and the Anzio beachhead.

[Includes 16 maps and 94 illustrations] "Wars should be fought," an American corps commander noted in his diary during the campaign in Italy, "in better country than this." It was indeed an incredibly difficult place to fight a war. The Italian peninsula is only some 150 miles wide, much of it dominated by some of the world’s most precipitous mountains. Nor was the weather much help. It seemed to those involved that it was always either unendurably hot or bone-chilling cold. Yet American troops fought with remarkable courage and tenacity, and in company with a veritable melange of Allied troop... Despite the forbidding terrain, Allied commanders several times turned it to their advantage, achieving penetrations or breakthroughs over some of the most rugged mountains in the peninsula. To bypass mountainous terrain, the Allies at times resorted to amphibious landings, notably at Anzio...The campaign involved one ponderous attack after another against fortified positions: the Winter Line, the Gustav Line, the Gothic Line... It was also a campaign replete with controversy...Most troublesome of the questions that caused controversy were: Did the American commander, Mark Clark, err in focusing on the capture of Rome rather than conforming with the wishes of his British superior to try to trap retreating German forces? Did Allied commanders conduct the pursuit north of Rome with sufficient vigor? Indeed, should the campaign have been pursued all the way to the Alps when the Allies might have halted at some readily defensible line and awaited the outcome of the decisive campaign in northwestern Europe? Just as the campaign began on a note of covert politico-military maneuvering to achieve surrender of Italian forces, so it ended with intrigue and secret negotiations for a separate surrender of the Germans in Italy.

The first full-length biography of World War II general and Cold Warrior John Wilson "Iron Mike" O’Daniel, featuring "the very essence of the man... who spent more time under fire with his front-line troops than behind the safety of his office desk." — ARGunners.com John Wilson “Iron Mike” O’Daniel was one of the U.S. Army’s great fighting generals of the 20th century. He began his military career with the Delaware Militia in 1914, served on the Mexican border in 1916, received a Distinguished Service Cross in World War I, was Mark Clark’s man for hard jobs in the early days of World War II, and commanded the storied 3rd Infantry Division from Anzio to the end of the war in Europe, ending the war in Salzburg after liberating Munich, and Hitler’s Berghof and Eagle’s Nest on the Obersalzberg, Bavaria, Germany. “Iron Mike “commanded I Corps in Korea 1951–1952 and ended his career as the Chief of the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Vietnam in the early days of American involvement there. LTC Stoy paints a vivid picture of this great American warrior who played an important role in World War II, became an ardent anti-Communist crusader after duty in Moscow as Military Attaché 1948–1950 as the Cold War intensified, laid the foundation for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and remained an ardent supporter of President Ngo Dinh Diem while serving as Chairman of the American Friends of Vietnam from his retirement in 1956 until 1963, shortly before Diem’s assassination.